1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electronic image capture and analysis, and specifically to the capture and analysis of bank documents such as checks, deposit slips, withdrawal requests, and other transaction records.
2. Description of Related Art
The current economic environment requires the efficient processing of bank documents such as, checks, deposit slips, withdrawals, and other transactions. These documents are processed by creating electronic digital images, where the resulting images are archived, replacing microfilm repositories. It is important that the captured images by of “acceptable” quality when saved, as subsequent processing, whether it be for record-keeping, dispute, research, documentation or a large number of other actions, is dependent on the ability to reproduce the original document from the saved image.
Recently, the ability to use digital images for transaction processing has advanced to the point where saved images are as valid as the original document. On Jun. 25, 2003, the United States Congress passed the Check Truncation Act of 2003 to “facilitate check truncation by authorizing substitute checks, to foster innovation in the check collection system without mandating receipt of checks in electronic form, and to improve the overall efficiency of the Nation's payments system.” In this Act the term “truncate” means “to remove an original paper check from the check collection or return process and send to a recipient, in lieu of such original paper check, a substitute check or, by agreement, information relating to the original check (including data taken from the MICR line of the original check or an electronic image of the original check), whether with or without subsequent delivery of the original paper check.”
In an environment where the original document is kept only as the electronic facsimile, and is the basis for “substitute” documents, accepted as the original, image quality is vitally important.
Current art includes the mechanical and electronic scanning and capture of bank documents (checks, deposit slips, etc.), where a document is moved beneath a light source and magnetic reading device (for MICR characters). The captured image is then processed by hardware and software systems to collect, examine, process, store, and label the document image. Such systems are prone to physical, optical, mechanical, and environmental conditions that lead to poor image quality. For example, dirt or dust on the document or on the optical light source or lens; poorly focused optical equipment; loose or defective cables or components; analog or digital or conversion failures; software failures; data path errors; or damaged, folded, torn, or perforated documents; or documents that have too much or too little contrast between the document background and the written portions cause poor image quality. Documents may also be of poor quality due to skew, rotation or inversion of the document, ink blots, finger prints, and stains of many origins. It is therefore important to detect and where possible correct poor image quality, and when not corrected, identify and process the document again or by another method to collect a quality document image.
It is important to differentiate between areas of the document, and decide on the quality of the image based on the overall quality detected. In the case of bank documents, some areas of the document are more important than others. For example, a check with overall poor quality may be usable if the quality of the payee, amount, and date areas of the check are acceptable. In processing a check, it is not overall image quality that is important. A check may have acceptable quality while the quality within the vital check areas, legal amount or other text information on a bank document, may independently be unacceptable. Bank documents have different vital image areas, for example, a check has different vital data when compared to a deposit slip. Current processing methods do not allow for the processing of different types of bank documents and processing different vital data positions within each type of bank document.
A need has arisen for a high speed image capture system which inspects each image and determines whether the image is acceptable based upon the quality of areas of the image rather than overall quality of the image. A need has further arisen for a method to examine payee, legal amount, and other text areas of a check and determine a quality confidence value for use in determining acceptable image quality.